CHAPTER XXIII.

CONFERENCE OF THE CREW.

Some time elapsed before the poor boy became sufficiently coherent to be understood, but it would seem that on hearing the first cry, which had alarmed me, he sprang out of his berth, which was at the foot of the companionway, and on looking into the cabin, he saw by the night lamp which swung in the skylight, the Cubano armed with a bloody knife, rush from the captain's state-room into that of the mate, which was opposite.

Another choking cry acquainted him that Antonio had stabbed Hislop in his sleep; and fearing that his own turn would come next, he had crept into an empty cask which lay below the companion-ladder, and remained there, trembling with dread, until he took an opportunity of rushing on deck and joining us.

This terrible revelation added to our dismay.

We were now in a desperate predicament, without a captain or mate to navigate the brig, and at the mercy of a well-armed desperado, to whom homicide was a pastime; thus, all who had handled him so severely on the night we crossed the line began to feel no small degree of alarm for their own safety, being certain that more blood would be shed the moment he came on deck.

All dressed themselves with the utmost expedition, and it was resolved to hold a council of war. Lambourne was still at the wheel; and to be prepared for any emergency, he resolved to reduce the canvas on the brig. So the royals were sent down, all studding-sails taken in, and the topsails were handed: all this was done as quietly as possible, lest any sound might rouse the fiend who seemed now to possess the _Eugenie_.

Lambourne ventured to peep down the skylight, when he saw Antonio drinking brandy from a case-bottle, without troubling himself with a glass. Then the Spaniard proceeded to attire himself in the best clothes of Captain Weston; he forced open several lockfast places, and took from them money and jewelry, which he concealed about his person. What his ultimate object could be in performing these acts of plunder on the open sea, we could neither conceive nor divine, but on chancing to glance upward, he caught a glimpse of Tom's eyes peering down.

There was an explosion, a crashing of glass, and a ball from a revolver, fired upward, grazed Tom's left ear and pierced the rim of his sou'-wester as a hint that our Cubano had no intention of being overlooked in his operations below.

We heard him close the cabin door with a bang, and after locking it, throw himself on the floor behind it, with the intention of sleeping probably, but with the full resolution that no one should enter without disturbing him; and in this way, after examining his pistols, he reposed every night afterwards while on board.

"By jingo! I thought the killing o' them birds would lead to bad luck somehow," said Henry Warren, an old foremast man, with a reproachful glance at me, as he threw the two albatrosses overboard.

We now held a solemn conference to meet the emergency which was certain to come anon, and to consider the best means of subduing and disarming the culprit.

"Whoever goes nigh him in the cabin, either by the door or the skylight, risks being stabbed or shot," said Tattooed Tom; "so we must go to work some other way, shipmates, and that other way must be considered."

"We might close and batten the skylight and companion, and then starve or smoke him out," suggested one of the crew, Francis Probart, our carpenter.

"Smoke him out?" echoed Tom.

"Yes, as we do rats."

"By what?"

"Fill a bucket with spun-yarn, and greased flax, with sulphur and bilge-water--ain't that the medical compound for rats----"

"Nonsense," said Tom; "you would burn the ship----"

"As he has often threatened to do," said Carlton, "and may do yet."

A most extraordinary scheme was proposed by one man, that we should launch the longboat, throw into her some bags of bread and gang-casks of water, unship the compass, double-bank the oars, and shove off for the coast of South America, after scuttling the brig and leaving Antonio to his fate.

We were in a horrible state of perplexity, and I seemed to see constantly before me the gashed bodies of my two kind, brave, and hospitable friends--Captain Weston and Marc Hislop--lying in their berths dead and unavenged, with their destroyer beside them!

We had the capstan-bars, and with these it was proposed to assail him when next he came on deck. Then we had the carpenter's tools, among which a hand-saw, an auger, an adze, and a hatchet, made very available weapons, and these, with the old cutlass and harpoons which figured on the night we crossed the line, were speedily appropriated. I was armed with a heavy claw-hammer, and, vowing firmly to stand by each other, we resolved to lynch Antonio the moment he came out of his den.

While we were thus employed in devising the means of punishment, the dark shadows of night passed away; the morning sun came up in his tropical splendor, and the blue waves of the southern sea rolled around us in light, but not a sail was visible on their vast expanse.

The crew seemed pale and excited, as they might well be, and by buckets of water we cleansed the deck from the blood that stained it.

The morning advanced into noon, and the vessel was steered her due course, for the wind was still fair. Ned Carlton was at the wheel, and the men were all grouped forward, when suddenly Antonio appeared on deck with a knife in his sash and a revolver in each hand.

He was so pale that his olive face seemed almost a pea-green, and a black crust upon his cruel lips showed the extent of his potations in the cabin. He glanced into the binnacle, and perceiving that the brig was still being steered her old course, he cried, in a hoarse voice,--

"Hombres, allegarse a la cuesta!" (men, bear toward the land), and pointing to the direction in which he knew the vast continent of South America--from which we were probably four or five hundred miles distant--must be, he added orders in English to shape the brig's course due west, and stamped his right foot on the deck to give his words additional force.

He took us so suddenly by surprise, that, although we had been waiting and watching for him since dawn, his resolute aspect and the arms he wielded controlled us all, and we stared at each other with irresolution in our purpose and in our faces. No man, apparently, cared to act as leader.

"Presto!" roared the Cubano; "obey and keep quiet, or, demonio! as there are so many, I have a great mind to shoot one half, that I may be able to control the rest. Cast loose those topsails, and up with the royals again--set the flying-gib, and main trysail--quick, perros, or I'll make shark's meat of some more of you!"

The crew seemed to lack either resolution or the power of combination, and no man appeared anxious to incur the sure penalty of instant death by acting in opposition to his peremptory orders in setting an example to the rest. So, sullenly and silently the sail trimmers stood by the tacks and braces; the wheel revolved in the unwilling hands of Ned Carlton, who was compelled to obey, for the cold muzzle of a six-barrelled revolver, capped and cocked, was held close to his left temple.

The head of the _Eugenie_ payed off in obedience to her helm, the yards swung round and were braced sharp up; and with the starboard tacks on board, in three minutes we were steering as due westward as her head would lie for the coast of South America.

This alteration of our course furnished the crew with a new source of speculation. It was evidently the intention of Antonio, if he could reach the coast of Seguro, or that of Bahia, to escape with all his valuables and his vengeance; and to this end, if ships passed without succoring or overhauling us, and if we did not destroy him, he might certainly destroy us, by scuttling the brig, or setting her on fire.

The noon passed over without an "observation," for there was no one to work it, to estimate the latitude or longitude, to keep a reckoning, or take note of our variation and leeway; and lest we should signal any passing ship, Antonio, who was a most thoughtful scoundrel, threw every color we had overboard. He did not come on deck again for some time, as he had plenty of spirits and provisions below, and the tell-tale compass in the skylight afforded him constant information as to whether the brig was steered in the direction he wished.

He was constantly drinking, but never became so intoxicated as to be unwary.

And so the fated brig glided over the hot sea, under the blazing sun. The albatrosses came round us again, with tripping feet, flapping wings, and open bills; but no one molested them now--we had other things to think of; and as I sat on the anchor stock in the weather bow, watching them floating in the water, or skimming over it with their vast wings outspread, I thought of the "Ancient Mariner," and all that he had suffered for killing "the bird of good omen."

I felt a strange dread creeping over me while these verses seemed on my tongue--they were so descriptive of the atmosphere and of our situation:

"All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody sun at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the moon.

* * * *

"I closed my lids, and kept them close, And the balls like pulses beat, For the sea and sky, and the sea and sky, Lay like a load on my weary eye, And the dead were at my feet."